


Where the Sky meets the Ocean

by TaleWeaver



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘This is heaven to no one else but me.’  But Natasha finds that with Clint, she can share even her most personal idyll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Sky meets the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashen_key](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/gifts).



> SPOILERS: Movie-verse, up to and including ‘Avengers’. Vague references to characters’ comic backgrounds.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to Marvel. Lyrics quoted in the fic belong to Sarah McLachlan, from her song ‘Elsewhere’. No profit is being made from this work, and no copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> PROMPT: be_compromised promptathon by ashen_key:
> 
> _Post-Red Room, pre-SHIELD, Natasha had a bolthole she always returned to. It was her home, and SHIELD never found it when they hunted her._
> 
> _One day - for vacation, to lie low after a mission, whichever - she takes Clint to it. It's a sign of trust._
> 
> _It's also nowhere Clint would have expected._

_I believe there is a distance I have wandered  
to touch upon the years of  
reaching out and reaching in  
holding out holding in_

Natalia is fifteen when her Masters of the Red Room decide she is too dangerous to be kept.

She has been trained to self-sufficiency, so when her handler turns on her, tries to kill her from behind, she simply views him as one more enemy and dispatches him as such.

It’s not as if she ever liked him, anyway. When he thought she wasn’t paying attention, he looked at her the same way the marks did. He also ordered her to sleep with the marks when it wasn’t the most efficient or effective method; she suspects he just wanted to see her nude or partially so and engaged in sexual activity.

Actually, she’d been thinking of killing him for awhile.

But her handler’s stupid enough to try and kill her in the mark’s country house – perhaps he wanted the man’s security to be blamed for her death? Why would anyone care? She doesn’t even exist outside the Red Room.

But it’s a good thing for Natalia – the safe houses are purposely devoid of anything that could be useful to her now. She promptly makes a quick but thorough search for portable valuables. Finding and cracking the second safe in the bedroom, she finds several large stacks of cash, several bags of gemstones, a few pieces of jewelry, and several sets of papers. 

She takes refuge in a church in St Petersburg, the air heavy with incense and the golden light of the forest of candles gleaming off the icons, softening the stern white marble of the statues.

The gemstones are all uncut – Zimsky must have meant them to finance his own run, if he needed to. She has no idea where to fence them, but they’ll be useful when she does. The cash is in rubles, swiss francs, and even a few UK pounds and US greenbacks.

The papers are the real jackpot. 

She was chosen for this mission because the mark very much prefers a certain type, not only for his wife but all the mistresses since her death. The papers include several false passports and travel papers. She’s a couple of years too mature to be the daughter, and at least five years too young to be the mistress, but she can carry off either with the right cosmetic alterations, clothing and body language.

All the jewelry is distinctive, flashy and of modern cut. Except for one piece; a delicate brooch of a spider, made from white gold with diamond legs and exquisitely enamelled black body, with blood-red rubies forming an hourglass. Her antiquity courses tell her it is old, pre-Revolution at least, and made by a master jeweller. On an impulse, she keeps it – the first material thing she has ever truly owned. She leaves the rest of the jewels in the church’s donation box.

Again on an impulse, she takes several planes from one quick stop to another, since her current passport gives her age as thirteen. Then she spends several days in Hong Kong, because a previous misson taught her where to find a high-stakes underground casino for expatriates that will let her change some of the stones without attracting attention. After a day shopping, and a night gambling, she emerges with a Hong Kong bank account that will transfer easily into several worldwide branches, and a small wardrobe suitable for an eighteen year old coming home from a college semester abroad.

She has to kill a few Triad members who are offended about her profiting in the casino and not even spreading her legs for a lower-level boss in return, but that hardly signifies.

She then takes the next plane to America. She’s never actually seen it before, and she’s curious about this traditonal enemy that her trainers all spoke about with such venom.

* * * *

When she lands in America, she finds that she’s on the south-east coast. She decides to follow impulse again – after all, it’s served her well so far.

She’s landed in a city that overflows with young adults – something called ‘spring break’, but how can so many youths be contained in a single place, that they would all come here? Nethertheless, she doesn’t even have to make an effort to blend in so well she disappears without a ripple. Just one more hot girl in a small bikini. A smile and a few made-up names tossed around, and she doesn’t even need a hotel, going from kegger to party to rave, and attaching herself to a different group every night when they find a place to crash. She sleeps in a different bed every night, and even though it’s never alone there are plenty of girls happy to share with someone who won’t molest them in their sleep.

But the non-stop noise and commotion of the city that gives her a constant threat of headache has a compensation that makes it all worth it. The ocean that cradles the city is the most beautiful shade of blue she’s ever seen, and Natalia indulges herself, sitting on a beach every single day at sunset, watching the play of colors where the sky meets the ocean.

It takes a false start or two before she finds out that she has only one set of ID papers that make her old enough to rent a car, and she needs to make some fairly time-consuming preparations – including a deep tan - before she’s a close enough match. In the meantime, she assembles a basic weapons stash – if she had an actual sense of humor it would be amusing, just how easy it is to buy guns and other lethal weapons in America.

But it’s not very long before she can get in the car and drive. She chooses the convertible, because the only American movie she’s ever seen all the way through tells her that beautiful teenage girls in America drive convertibles, especially when the weather is warm.

She points the car north and starts driving, trying her best to keep the ocean in view whenever she can. 

* * * *

When she is stopped by the Canadian border, she turns around again, and drives back down the coast until the car unexpectedly runs out of gas. With a few Russian curses, Natalia grabs her two bags – one for weapons, one for clothing and valuables – and starts walking along the coastal road, heading for the town whose lights shine in the distance.

She finds the lighthouse first.

It stands dark and ominously watching, but somehow not forbidding. The fact that no light beams from the top is an obvious clue, but when Natalia automatically picks the heavy, old-fashioned lock, it’s easy to see that no one has been here in quite some time. It’s all but pitch-black inside due to the boarded up windows. The dust lies thick as a carpet on the stone floor, and while there isn’t much actual damage, the whole place bears the unkempt look of long-term neglect.

Absently dropping her bags near the door, Natalia wanders past a couple of pieces of furniture draped in sheets and a small table covered only in dust, threading her way in the dark like a cat. She carefully climbs the creaking stairs, but they seem to still be solid enough, and she ascends through two more floors, both holding a single room and utterly empty, until she’s in the glass bubble that holds the giant lamp.

There’s something inexplicably sad about the lamp, left decaying here.

The glass door that opens to the narrow steel balcony that circles the topmost level is unlocked, and Natalia slips through. The balcony is all of three feet wide, the safety railing a simple affair of three slim steel rods spaced to come up to her waist. Natalia sits on the cold steel grating, letting her legs dangle over the yawning drop to the ocean, and stares into the slowly lightening darkness.

Her heart thuds harshly in her chest at the first flash of gold. The show only gets better after that.

Natalia watches the sun come up, emerging from where the sky meets the ocean, and it feels like she is learning to breathe all over again.


End file.
